1931 Chuck Feeney, businessman and philanthropist who gave away his fortune of $8 billion over a 38-year period, including $1.3b to projects in the Republic of Ireland and $570m to projects in Northern Ireland, born to Irish-American parents in New Jersey. 1971 C.B. (Cyril Bentham) Falls, military correspondent of The Times (1939–53), historian and author … Read more
1870 Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, revolutionary, politician and political theorist, born in Simbirsk, the third of eight children. 1969 Prime Minister Terence O’Neill agreed to universal suffrage—‘one man, one vote’—in local elections in Northern Ireland. His cousin, Major James Chichester Clarke, resigned in protest the following day. 1967 Walter Mackin (50), actor, dramatist … Read more
1968 In what became known as the ‘rivers of blood’ speech, Enoch Powell MP strongly criticised mass immigration, especially Commonwealth immigration to the UK, and the then proposed Race Relations Act. 1954 Michael Manning (25), a carter from Groody, Limerick city, was hanged in Mountjoy Jail for the murder of an elderly nurse. He was … Read more
1952 Edmund O’Brien (71), County Limerick-born author and yachtsman who in 1923 circumnavigated the globe in his ketch Saoirse, died. 1870 Robert Noonan, house-painter, sign-writer and author, notably of The ragged-trousered philanthropists (1914), born Robert Croker, the illegitimate son of an RIC officer, at 37 Wexford Street, Dublin. 1949 Under the terms of the Republic of Ireland Act … Read more
1971 Tailors’ Hall, Back Lane, Dublin, reopened after restoration. The sole survivor of Dublin’s old guild halls, it was the meeting-place of the Catholic Committee’s ‘Back Lane Parliament’ in December 1792. 1969 Bernadette Devlin (21, Unity candidate) won the Mid-Ulster Westminster by-election to become the youngest-ever MP in the House of Commons. 1917 Jane Barlow … Read more